Thanks for the memories, but you were all completely "Irrelevant" during the historic victory that Barack Obama achieved during 2008 Presidential election. All your smears failed to change the course of history: http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/irrelevant

And this:

George Bush isn't the only republican who could be out of a job come January. Rumors are pinging around the blogosphere that the New York Times isn't inclined to renew the one-year contract of Bill Kristol, the neo-conservative [wank-brained sausage jockey who was responsible for bringing us Sarah Failin].

The U.S. economy shed 240,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate jumped sharply to 6.5 percent, a worse-than-expected showing that highlights one of the top issues President-elect Barack Obama faces when he meets with his economic advisers later today.

Businesses have been trimming payrolls since the start of the year, with 1.2 million positions lost over the past 10 months. The 6.5 percent unemployment rate -- up from 6.1 percent in September -- is the highest since early 1994, when the economy was pulling out of recession.

More than 10 million people are now jobless, actively seeking work but unable to find it, a number that has spiked by 2.8 million over the past year.

The way things are going we'll soon be looking back on these as the Gold Old Days when unemployment was only 6% instead of, what? 10? 20? 50? Should we start a pool on how bad it will get? Would you believe more than 50%?

(And btw, what's with the "worse-than-expected" shit? Expected by whom? This has been inevitable for months and happening for months. Next month will be worse. Far worse.)

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Rebuilding the Republican party

After Tuesday's rout, the Republican party finds itself in pretty bad shape. Beaten and bloodied, rejected and discredited, the task for them is to make the party viable again. The swings states have swung blue and Democratic party head Howard Dean's fifty state strategy saw many of the reddest states turn a little more purple. In John McCain's home state of Arizona, Republicans saw Barack Obama come within shouting distance of winning. At the end, the battleground states weren't the midwest, but in traditionally conservative states. Republicans could take nearly nothing for granted.

So today, top Republicans are meeting to sort out what to do. Rebuilding the party is going to be a long, hard slog, but rebuild it they will try to do.

Two days after next week's election, top conservatives will gather at the Virginia weekend home of one of the movement's most prominent members to begin a conversation about their role in the GOP and how best to revive a party that may be out of power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue next year.

The meeting will include a "who's who of conservative leaders -- economic, national security and social," said one attendee, who shared initial word of the secret session only on the basis of anonymity and with some details about the host and location redacted.

The decision to waste no time in plotting their moves in the post-Bush era reflects the widely-held view among many on the right, and elsewhere, that the GOP is heading toward major losses next week.

Nothing better than to get all the people who screwed everything up in the first place together to find a way to straighten it all out. So far, their band-aid solution has been to repeat that the US is a "center-right" country ad nauseum. Barack Obama -- formerly accused by these same people of being Marxist -- has supposedly won the election by running as a conservative. This new line is everywhere on cable and op-ed pages.

If this is any indication of what they'll come up with from their strategy meeting, then we can expect them to assume that their previous line of BS wasn't any good; they need a new line of BS.

May her dreams reveal to her what the words cruel and cowardly really mean. Just because she was on the losing side of our most recent national election doesn't mean she knows what real loss is. Perhaps one day she will learn empathy and compassion, and act accordingly. I shall begin holding my breath...now.

The Hunter becomes the hunted. Happens all the time.

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Gay basher upset about Mormon bashing

"I am appalled at the level of Mormon-bashing that went on during the Proposition 8 campaign and continues to this day," [Jeff Flint, strategist for Yes on 8 campaign] said. "If this activity were directed against any other church, if someone put up a website that targeted Jews or Catholics in a similar fashion for the mere act of participating in a political campaign, it would be widely and rightfully condemned."

Two things here.

One: How does it feel to be on the wrong side of "bashing" people for the first time in your life, Jeff?

Two: I think you just made the case for taking away the Mormon church's tax-exempt status. You said the "church" participated in a "political campaign." The church is welcome to jump into the political arena in this country, but not to remain tax-exempt while doing so.

Jeff is upset because a web site exposed the religious denomination of Mormon donors to the multi-million dollar campaign to make gay marriage illegal in California. The site's purpose was to show that Mormons were the main bankroll behind the ballot initiative.

Update: On Friday, thousands swarmed downtown Salt Lake City to march past the LDS temple and church headquarters, protesting Mormon involvement in the campaign for California's Proposition 8.

AP: Utah's growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Mormon church for its aggressive promotion of California's ban on gay marriage.

"I see that some of my NRO colleagues are scratching around for shards of optimism — of Hope! — in the general wreckage. Good luck to them. I see nothing for conservatives to hope for in an Obama administration. We just have to stick it out. This shallow, ignorant, self-obsessed man, who held an actual job for just one year of his charmed life (low-grade editing for an obscure newsletter — he felt, he tells us in Dreams, "like a spy behind enemy lines," the enemy of course being capitalism), this red-diaper baby and his wife, will be our First Couple for the next four years and some weeks. It'll be interesting. Interesting," - John Derbyshire, NRO.

Now that Obama is the president-elect, Iraqi officials say they're feeling better and are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement.

It's going to make a tremendous difference to have a man in office that other countries respect and trust. We could end up *gasp* leading the world again. It's not wise to expect miracles of the man, but he's certainly off to a good start.

To those top McCain advisers who leaked the little story about seeing Sarah Palin in a towel; to those who called her and her family "Wasilla hillbillies" while using her to stoke class warfare with red meat speeches and an anti-elitist message; to those who claim she didn't know Africa was a continent; to those McCain aides who say she is the reason they lost this election: Can I please remind you of one thing? You picked her.

You are the ones who supposedly vetted her, and then told the American people she was qualified for the job. You are the ones who, after meeting her a couple of times, told us she was ready to be just one heartbeat away from the presidency.

If even half of what you say now is true, then boy, did you try to sell the American people a bill of goods. If Sarah Palin is the reason some voters chose Barack Obama, that is no one's fault but your own.

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A Butler Well Served by This ElectionFor 34 Years, Eugene Allen Carried White House Trays With Pride. Now There's Even More Reason to Carry Himself That Way.

By Wil Haygood, WaPo

For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen.

At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene.

President Ford liked to talk golf with him.

He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," Allen says.

His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen.

He was there while America's racial history was being remade: Brown v. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.

When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. "We had never had anything," Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better."

When George W. Bush leaves office in January, he's likely to join other past presidents and write a memoir. However, publishers aren't that interested in producing something from history's most unpopular president at this point and are suggesting that he "take [his] time." Even Marji Ross of the conservative Regnery Publishing said, "Certainly the longer he waits, the better."

The spirit of Winston Churchill was alive and well on Tuesday night at Focus on the Family Action headquarters.

You may recall that in the most desperate days of World War II – when Great Britain was being pounded daily by Hitler's Luftwaffe – that Winston Churchill called on his countrymen not to despair from danger but to rise to the challenge. […]

As our incredible team of staff members watched the election results pour in on Election Night, an amazing thing happened that Churchill might have recognized. Despite some sobering disappointments, there was no mood of despair and no "bunker mentality."

According to a NY Times editorial, the Pentagon, fighting to ensure democritude, blocked the military's independent paper from covering troops' positive reactions to the election.

In a stroke of self-satire, Pentagon officials tried to block Stars and Stripes — the military's respected independent newspaper — from covering the troops' plain and honest reactions to the election night news about their new commander in chief. The Department of Defense once again made news by smothering news.

The good news is that Stars and Stripes found commanders in the Middle East and Europe that ignored the foolish directive, as if it were a premise for a "M*A*S*H" episode. Its reporters did their jobs until forced to stop.